Monday, February 16, 2015

[Sermon from Sunday, Feb. 15. Part 5, the final installment, in a sermon series, "Treasures Old and New," about my sabbatical in the fall of 2014.]

Hello, I’d like to introduce
myself. I’m Father John; nice to meet
you. And several years ago, that’s about
the last way I would have imagined introducing myself – as a “father,” in
either sense of that word.

As a young man, I’d set rather limited
boundaries around who I thought I was – a student, a writer and editor, someone
who really valued having all his ducks in a row. Until Ann and I got together, I couldn’t see
myself ever having children because of how disruptive it would have been (it’s
amazing how finding the right person can change things). I believed I didn’t have the capacity to be a
good parent – particularly, the ability to sacrifice in the way parenthood
demands. Every parent in this room knows
what I’m talking about. That baby comes,
and all of a sudden, almost nothing’s about you anymore.

Similarly, as a young man, I had a rather
narrow sense of what being a person of faith might mean for me. I’d grown up as an Episcopalian; I went to
church from time to time; I was basically a nice guy – I thought that pretty
much covered it. After Ann and I got
married, I joined the choir at our church in Iowa City. When we moved back to the Kansas City area, I
got more involved, editing the newsletter, going to Bible study, being a lector,
singing in that choir. I even found
myself on the stewardship committee – surely that’s enough, right God?
Pesky deity. It seemed there was always
more in me that God was trying to reveal.

So now, I find myself as “Father” John,
in both senses of that word. And it
fits. I know it fits. It’s the identity God had in mind for me to
live into. All along the way, God kept
asking me to be a little more of who I was.

Our readings this morning tell a similar
story. In the first one, the prophet
Elijah gets the spotlight, with a chariot of fire taking him up to heaven. But I think his deputy, Elisha, is the real
focus of today’s reading. As Elisha is
about to take the mantle of prophetic leadership, his master asks him, “What
can I do for you?” And Elisha says, “Let
me inherit a double share of your spirit” (2 Kings 2:9) – let me be even more
of who I am.

And in the Gospel reading, this
incredible story of the Transfiguration, Jesus shows his followers who he truly
is, God’s own Son, so they can begin to see who they might truly be. To get this,
you have to connect today’s story with what comes before it. On the mountain of transfiguration, as Jesus
talks with Moses and Elijah, and as Peter stumbles over himself to say
something meaningful, suddenly the voice of God booms from the cloud,
proclaiming, “This is my Son; listen to him!”
Of course, Jesus hasn’t said anything, at least nothing we can hear. But before this story, he has a lot to
say. Peter declares that Jesus is the
messiah, and Jesus tells him, “Yes, that’s right” – and it does mean “glory,”
but not the way you’re thinking. It
means sacrifice, and rejection, and death on a cross – and then it means rising again in glory to rule at God’s right
hand. And here’s the kicker, for disciples
then and now: That same path is yours,
too. I’m calling you to servant
leadership, Jesus says. I’m calling you
to empty yourselves and give yourselves away.
You’ve left everything to follow me, Jesus says. You’re answering the call, and that’s great –
but it’s only the beginning. To take
your places with me in God’s kingdom, Jesus says, be more of who you are.

The reading from 1 Corinthians makes it
clear: We are not here to proclaim
ourselves and our particular agendas. We
proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as servants for his sake. And as we do, the light of Christ shines
through us for the people around us. We
bear that light, sparked by the Spirit in baptism, fanned to flame through
faith. We bear Christ’s light for the
purpose of letting it shine – for our families and friends, our city, and our
world. You may have trouble seeing
yourself that way, as a bearer of divine light.
But you are. We are. And when we shine
it, we become even more of who we are.

I saw that in stop after stop of my sabbatical
journey, and I want to share one last example with you today, as this
sabbatical sermon series comes to a close.
It ends where our journey began, in Boston – the first place Ann and I
visited this fall. The church I studied there
is the Cathedral of St. Paul downtown, looking out on Boston Common. If you’ve been there, you know it’s a busy area,
with all sorts and conditions of people walking by, day in and day out.
Business leaders and students, homeless people and professionals, people from
every nation under the sun. So it’s no
surprise the cathedral calls itself “a house of prayer for all” – and it’s been that way since 1912, when the
cathedral intentionally opened its doors wide to poor people struggling in
downtown Boston.

The cathedral has four worshiping
communities. The one I went to study,
ostensibly, is called The Crossing. It’s a community of mostly younger adults who live or work in downtown,
people whom the existing cathedral wasn’t reaching so well. It’s also church from the bottom up,
following a model of community organizing rather than starting with cool,
flashy worship and hoping people come.
The founders of The Crossing went into that work intentionally, building
connections with spiritual pilgrims in downtown, getting to know them,
connecting them into networks of folks with common interests. They found common passions and a desire to
make a difference in their city and their world. They studied together and talked together and
ate and drank together, meeting their hunger with Christian spirituality, community
service, and margaritas. Eventually, they
began worshiping together, and now the weekly service involves about 30 or so. The bottom-up nature of The Crossing is a huge
part of its identity. Isaac Everett, one
of the founders, puts it like this: “The Crossing would rather have D+ prayers
written by someone we know and love, rather than A+ prayers we got off the
Internet.”

The Crossing’s story is fascinating, but
it’s even more so in the context of the larger cathedral community. In addition to The Crossing, there’s a
worshiping community of homeless people on Boston Common and a worshiping
community of first- and second-generation Chinese immigrants. And the “traditional” Sunday-morning
community is itself a study in being “a house of prayer for all.” Because the people are diverse, the cathedral
has made Sunday-morning worship diverse, too, using music and prayers from
around the world and across the Anglican Communion.

But the dean, Jep Streit, realized there
was one group of people the worship almost certainly
wasn’t reaching so well: traditional
Episcopalians. As it happened, God
provided an opportunity to open that door, too.
A nearby Episcopal congregation was shrinking and really could no longer
sustain itself – St. John’s, one of the few high-church, Anglo-Catholic
parishes in Boston. So the dean saw an
opportunity: Merge the congregations,
sell St. John’s building, and incorporate some of its high-church richness into
the cathedral’s worship. Here’s how Jep
explained it to me: “The people of St.
John’s are faithful, and they have things to teach us about liturgy. What we all say is that the new community
formed from our merger will be different from the cathedral and different from St.
John’s – and it will be better.”

This kind of an approach to church – one
that values the D+ prayers of The Crossing as highly as a precise
Anglo-Catholic mass – this kind of a church could only happen because the DNA
was there. The cathedral already was “a
house of prayer for all.” As the
congregation morphs and grows, that identity remains the same. Only the sights and sounds (and smells) of
the worship are different.

So, what does all this mean for us, as
we come to the end of this Epiphany season and the end of this sermon series, to
the beginning of Lent this Wednesday and the beginning of our Gather & Grow
initiative? In each of the parishes I’ve
told you about from the sabbatical, we’ve seen congregations living in the
“both/and” of inherited church and new expressions of church together. But among the things common to all of them is
this: Their expressions of church, no
matter the style, are true to their DNA.
If you looked at the glorious worship in the abbey in Tewkesbury,
England, and its Celebrate! community in a housing project, you’d see the same
church. If you looked at the colonial
parishes in Maryland with their box pews and the homey, intimate gathering of
kids and grownups in an art studio, you’d see the same church. Like individuals, churches can’t be something
they’re not, and they should not try to be. But just like individuals – and like a
certain hesitant father you know – churches
can be more than they currently are.
Not different, not foreign, but mature.
As we grow up, the Holy Spirit keeps working with us – thanks be to God
– to help us be more of who we are.

For us as a congregation, that’s what
Gather & Grow is all about – both in terms of ministry and in terms of
improving our facilities. And Lent is a
good time for us to begin this walk together.
In Lent, we focus on our spiritual journey, looking within us and around
us to, asking God to work on us and form us more and more into the full stature
of Christ. Typically, that journey takes
a twisting path of self-discovery, leading us through the same territory the
disciples traipsed, a land of self-giving and self-sacrifice. It’s Jesus’ own path, of course, and we who
would follow him shouldn’t be surprised that the path to the glory of the
kingdom of God takes us up the hill of Calvary along the way. Giving ourselves away – that’s how we come to
the fullness of who God is making us to be.

Well, for us as St. Andrew’s, our
journey is also Jesus’ own path. We’re hearing
his call to reach the people around us, to open our hearts and our doors to the
spiritual pilgrims in our community.
It’s not a new call, and it’s one we’ve answered before – beginning in
1913 as a mission outpost in a brand-new neighborhood, building this glorious
house of prayer for all, planting a new congregation in south Kansas City in
1957. It’s true to our identity; it’s in
our DNA. And like each of those
missional moments, like all our best moments of following our crucified Lord
and King, this one will cost us something.
It will cost us investments that will return blessing upon blessing – many,
many times over.

From our own journeys, we know it’s true.For moms and dads, that crying baby or absent
teen costs them sleep, night after night; but the servant leadership of
parenthood is the most deeply formative journey they’ll ever take.And for us as disciples, the journey toward
the glory of God that we see in the face of Jesus Christ – it’s a journey up
rough and challenging terrain.The path
up the mountain of our transfiguration is marked by small crosses all along the
way.But that’s the way up the grandest
mountain, the journey of our ultimate fulfillment – the path of becoming more
and more of who we truly are.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

[Sermon from Sunday, Feb. 1. Part 4 in a sermon series, "Treasures Old and New," about my sabbatical in the fall of 2014.]

In case you couldn’t tell from all the
people in uniforms in the procession … we’re celebrating Scout Sunday this morning. I’m curious – how many of you were Boy
Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, that sort of thing? Not that they’re all the same, but I think
it’s fair to say they all develop leadership by planting and nurturing core
values in young people, and then giving them the chance to live out those
values in the world. Leaders have to be
guided by principles, and they put flesh and bones on those principles by the
way they live. As the saying goes, actions
speak louder than words.

So, for you Scouts, I’m going to put you
on the spot. But don’t worry, you know
this: Stand up, all you Scouts, and please
tell us the Scout Law: “AScoutis trustworthy, loyal, helpful,
friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and
reverent.” Good job. Now, how about the Scout Oath? “On
my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country, and
to obey theScoutLaw, to help other people at all
times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally
straight.”

You
Scouts are
called to love and serve God, your country, and the people around you, without
exception. Now, you know that. And you’d
probably say you believe that. And you do
things that point to that – like earning merit badges and doing service
projects, all the way up to Eagle projects.
But to be the example that a Scout should be – how you live, day to day,
has to match what you know and what you say, right? Because actions speak louder than words.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been preaching
about the churches I studied on my sabbatical in the fall. This week, in the category of “actions speak
louder than words,” I want to highlight the congregation I visited in Portland,
Oregon – St. Andrew’s. St. Andrew’s in
North Portland was founded in 1895, but in recent decades it fell on hard
times. By 2012, there were literally 15
to 20 people worshiping there on a Sunday, all of them folks who’d been there
for decades. More important, it had developed
a reputation, frankly, as a weird little church; the music on Sunday morning
was a parishioner playing his accordion for the other 15 people there. Visitors tended not to stay. So the bishop had to decide what to do with the
place. Rather than closing it, he sent a
missioner with a background in planting a new kind of church, a gathering of
spiritual pilgrims in their 20s and 30s.
Her name is Karen Ward, and she’d done that with success in Seattle, at
a place called Church of the Apostles.
Karen came to Portland originally looking to plant the same kind of
church, but – as often happens – God had other plans. She found herself called to this weird little
church with the accordion.

Well, after more than a century of having
had one middle-aged white guy after another as the priest at St. Andrew’s,
Karen was different. She’s young,
female, African American, and rarely wears a collar. And she was known for starting this very
unconventional kind of church in her last gig.
So, not surprisingly, the people at St. Andrew’s feared that all this
was a sham – that, despite reassurances from her and from the bishop, Karen
really just wanted to replace something old with something new.

Instead, Karen and the parish are
finding their way together. She has gathered a group of young spiritual
pilgrims, people from a variety of faith traditions and from no faith tradition
– guys with long beards and ear gauges. They
worship with simple, accessible music; they have open space in the service for
prayer stations; they make the sermon participatory – many of the same things
you’ve heard me describe from the other places I’ve visited. This “emerging” worship experience happens
regularly on Sunday mornings.

And for their first two years, so has their
inherited form of church – minus the accordion.
There was a standard celebration of Holy Eucharist from the Prayer Book,
with hymns from the Hymnal and a standard sermon. That’s how it was when I visited in the
fall. I e-mailed with Karen recently,
and apparently things have changed a bit, at least for now. After two years of worshiping separately, the
long-term members and newer members have chosen to worship together, at least
for a time, using a blended approach.
But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they go back to the two-service
model – especially since the congregation is growing, including people at both
ends of the worship spectrum.

Why are they growing? A big part of the reason is that Karen did
what she said she’d do when she came. She
brought new life to both worshiping communities there. Here’s how she described the situation to
me. The church – now called St. Andrew
and All Souls, to recognize the new people who’ve come – this church is the
only Episcopal presence in all of North Portland, an area of 11 neighborhoods with
a lot more working-class folks than the hipster world of Portlandia. Karen takes it
seriously that this congregation is the Episcopal Church in North
Portland. She said, “I'm not against
traditional masses. I actually think we need to have a traditional mass. We’re the only Episcopal Church for these 11
neighborhoods; so if there’s going to be traditional worship, it’s going to be
us doing it. To have a diverse parish,
you have to have traditional worship, too.”

But even more important, Karen has
worked hard to bring church members together around core principles. One is the principle that worship unites us,
no matter how we might prefer it individually.

But another core principle uniting these
diverse groups is their commitment to share God’s love with the people around
them. For decades, St. Andrew’s has had
a food pantry and a small community theater group performing in its
basement. So it’s deep in the
congregation’s DNA to reach and serve people in their community. So now, they’re building on that. Rather than just hosting a theater group,
they want to offer a series of arts programs, particularly to serve families
and kids nearby – families that can’t afford cool, trendy arts camps. They’re working to open a coffee shop in an
old building the parish owns and use the proceeds to support the arts program
and the food pantry. And they want to
expand the pantry to offer counseling and basic health services, too. Loving people, serving people, extending the
branches of God’s kingdom – that’s a big part of who St. Andrew’s has been forever
and who it still is now. People there
were afraid that a different kind of priest and different sorts and conditions
of members would kill the church they’d known and loved. Instead, Karen has been committed to
rejuvenating the heart that was already there.

Maybe most important, Karen is uniting
the congregation by leading them to deepen their commitment to God, each other,
and their church. They’re developing a
rule of life for their congregation – a statement of what it means, and what it
looks like, to be a member. It
identifies the core values that unite them in their journey, values like
relationship, welcome, hospitality, and feeding people. And it describes spiritual practices that
help them live out those values, practices like regular worship, prayer,
giving, study, and service. It’s about
moving beyond knowing what a Christian is supposed
to do, and into the practice of intentionally living a Christian life – the day-to-day
practice of love for God, one another, and the people around us. As St. Paul says in the reading this morning,
“We know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’”
But that’s not enough, Paul would say.
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1) And not just any love, not just feeling warm and fuzzy about something, but the
love of Jesus himself, agape – love
that opens our hearts and our lives for the sake of others.

Here, at our St. Andrew’s, the scale may
be different, and the context may be different; but the call for us is the
same. As I said last week, it’s about
both deepening our roots and extending our branches. God wants us to deepen our roots as a congregation
by strengthening the ways of doing church that have been our foundation for decades,
worshiping in a way that links us with Christians across time and space, this
amazing entryway into the transcendent, majestic presence of God. And it’s also about deepening our roots as
individual disciples, committing ourselves to intentional faithfulness, to a
rule of life. It’s about committing
ourselves to live the covenant of baptism, a relationship among ourselves, God,
this faith community, and the world.
It’s about committing ourselves to worship and pray, to repent from sin,
to proclaim good news, to love our neighbors, to strive for peace and justice –
to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God, as the Catechism
puts it. That’s what unifies us, what
makes us one body gathered within this rich, crazy, diverse, big tent.

And with those deep roots, we can extend
our branches to the community God asks us to love. It’s what I was describing at the Annual
Meeting last week, about the ministries of our Gather & Grow initiative. We’ll strengthen worship and formation; we’ll
connect with more young people, like these Scouts, and their families; we’ll
support entrepreneurs whose work builds justice and peace; and we’ll open our
facility more intentionally to people nearby and build relationships with them. Through these manifestations of God’s
mission, we can reach spiritual pilgrims around us and help bring God’s kingdom
to life – which is what the Church is here for.

Like St. Andrew and All Souls in
Portland, we can’t just ride a long and venerable history and hope that will
carry us into a second century. We’re
called not only to be who we’ve been
but to be more of who we’re becoming.
We’re called not just to know faith, not even just to talk faith, but to
do faith. Authentic faithfulness – living as Christians
in ways that fit us and that change the world – that kind of authentic
faithfulness speaks love in the most powerful way.

As St. Francis said, “Proclaim the Good
News at all times; use words when necessary.”
Know the call, and live it out loud.
Root yourself, and extend yourself.
Go deep, and go wide.